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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Doreen Blackburn and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was six at the start of the war and my dad was away in the catering corp. I attended Leavengreave School and if the sirens went it was off to the air raid shelters, which were absolutely pitch black inside. We knitted socks for soldiers and got bulletins as to how the soldiers at Whitworth were fairing.

During the blackouts at home we lit candles and played housey, housey and games with some ebony and ivory dominoes. We had a radio and I remember listening to Winston Churchill.

My grandmother used to dress all in black and one night in the blackout, she walked into a lamp post and injured herself. At night we watched the lights on he aeroplanes as they flew towards Manchester.

I had a brother who was in the Durham Light Infantry and he fought with the Desert Rats and was at the Dunkirk landing.

My sister married during the war and there was no wedding cake, due to the rationing she just had sandwiches and a plain cake. With the ration books you just got 2oz of cheese and 2oz of butter, a few sweets and one banana for each family member, when they were available.

One night at the cinema we were just coming out, when a film came on, showing someone frying eggs in a pan so we stayed to watch. In those days a bag of crisps cost a halfpenny or two farthings. You could return a jam jar for re-cycling and be paid a halfpenny for it or get a sandstones for stoning the outside steps in exchange for a bundle of rags.

In Whitworth on VE Day lots of parties took place in the streets, I was by now at Lloyd Street School and we celebrated there.

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